Spitzer and Hubble View of NGC 2207 and IC 2163

These shape-shifting galaxies have taken on the form of a giant
mask. The icy blue eyes are actually the cores of two merging galaxies,
called NGC 2207 and IC 2163, and the mask is their spiral arms. The
false-colored image consists of infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space
Telescope (red) and visible data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope
(blue/green).

NGC 2207 and IC 2163 met and began a sort of gravitational tango
about 40 million years ago. The two galaxies are tugging at each other,
stimulating new stars to form. Eventually, this cosmic ball will come
to an end, when the galaxies meld into one. The dancing duo is located
140 million light-years away in the Canis Major constellation.

The infrared data from Spitzer highlight the galaxies' dusty
regions, while the visible data from Hubble indicates starlight. In the
Hubble-only image (not pictured here), the dusty regions appear as dark
lanes.

The Hubble data correspond to light with wavelengths of .44 and .55
microns (blue and green, respectively). The Spitzer data represent
light of 8 microns.

The Spitzer Space Telescope is a NASA mission managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This website is maintained by the Spitzer Science Center, located on the campus of the California Institute of Technology and part of NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center.